Some timepiece components, i.e., balance springs and wheels, are manufactured from silicon nowadays. Silicon is useful owing to its lightness, its resiliency, its non-magnetic properties and for its ability to be machined by micro-manufacturing techniques, in particular by the deep reactive-ion etching (DRIE) technique.
However, silicon does have some disadvantages: it is fragile, in other words it does not have any plasticity, which makes it difficult for example to attach a silicon wheel to an axle. Moreover, its extreme lightness does not permit components such as a balance or oscillating mass, which must have sufficient inertia or unbalance, to be formed completely from silicon and to be formed with small dimensions.
Materials other than silicon, themselves also able to be machined by micro-manufacturing techniques, and whose use could be envisioned for manufacturing timepiece components, have the same disadvantages. These materials are, in particular, diamond, quartz, glass and silicon carbide.